Will ‘Portfolio District Model’ Yield Returns on Investment?

July 23, 2014Charles Lussier of The Advocate for EWA

The idea has a simple, seductive appeal. Expand the things that
work, cut short the things that don’t.

The notion, drawn from the
investment world, has manifested itself in public education as
the “Portfolio District Model.” Instead of managing stocks and
bonds, school districts manage schools, creating or expanding
successful ones, closing unsuccessful ones, focusing with zeal on
academic results.

Starting with a handful of
school districts more than a decade ago, it has grown fast.
Thirty-seven districts and counting are now trying some variant
of the approach. They range from Boston, which spent years
focused largely on improving professional development, to New
Orleans, which is almost all independent charter schools.

But does it work?

EWA’s “Deep Dive” into this
model, presented at the association’s National Seminar in
Nashville in May, suggests that it’s too early to tell. Advocates
acknowledge it has had mixed results so far but point to a few
districts with strong gains. They say it’s a promising
alternative to past, and often disappointing, attempts at
districtwide reform. Skeptics raise a lot of questions that as
yet have few answers.

The Seattle-based Center on
Reinventing Public Education has been at the movement’s
epicenter. CRPE founder Paul T. Hill pioneered the idea. CRPE is
producing a stream of research looking into the approach.

“We’re not ideological. We just
want to see what works,” said Christine Campbell, a senior
research analyst with CRPE, who gave an overview of the approach
for the panel.

CRPE gave out copies of an
informative 2013 book they published, “Strife and Progress,”
which examines how portfolio districts are doing so far.

CRPE takes a biannual snapshot
of portfolio districts and rates them based on these components.
Its latest
version includes 24 districts.

“With the portfolio strategy, we
think it very imperative every kid has a chance to not go to a
low-performing school,” Campbell said.

She offered some lessons learned
so far:

Neither choice nor autonomy is enough.

Pupil-based funding
requires a mindset shift.

Talent is everything.

Putting accountability systems to use has created a great
deal of conflict.

Involving families and communities in real ways has too often
been overlooked.

A couple of early adopters who
showed gains, including Oakland and more recently, New York City,
have since changed course, she said. Oakland’s scores have
stopped growing and have flattened since, she said.

Campbell said the area where
portfolio districts usually need most work is in civic engagement
to sustain reforms.

“Student gains are not enough to
get engagement,” she said. “You need involvement.”

Panelist Katrina Bulkley, a
professor at Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J.,
raised a number of concerns:

Political and fiscal instability in some portfolio districts
spooks the best charter management organizations.

Overseeing charters and
independent schools requires a different “skillset” in the
district’s central office than the norm.

Struggling schools can suffer as other
schools soak up resources and support.

Closing
schools often leads to kids going to
not-much-better schools and leaves educational “deserts”
in their place.

Increasing choice can lead to more racial
and socioeconomic segregation.

“It takes a lot of time and a
lot of money to answer those questions,” she
acknowledged.

Bulkley suspects access to
resources separates winners from losers. “Districts that are
going to have more resources are going to be able to show more
results,” she said. “And that raises questions of whether it’s
the model or the resources?”

Linda Perlstein, a former EWA
staffer who now works for CRPE, handed out a list of questions
that reporters could pursue and links to stories reporters have
already tackled. For instance, “Where districts have adopted
student-based budgeting has it changed the incentives and caused
schools to work harder to hang on to difficult students?”

Several reporters, panelists and
not, covering portfolio districts also shared their experiences
and perspectives.

For instance, Kate Grossman of
the Chicago Sun-Times had a lot of information about a flashpoint
in her portfolio district: school closures.

She recounted a story she wrote
on a “half-empty” school, according to the city of Chicago, that
nevertheless was using every classroom productively. She also
questioned the upside for students of transferring to a
marginally higher-performing school.

“The Chicago Consortium on
School Research found that only works if you go to a top quartile
school,” Grossman said.

(EWA gave Grossman
first prize in its annual writing contest for her
coverage.)

Maura Walz with Chalkbeat Colorado recalled a
story in her publication about Manual High School, a
turnaround school where the principal, using his budget
independence, went $600,000 in debt over the course of months, in
part by avoiding for months meeting with his central office
supervisor.

The Deep Dive concluded with a
principal, administrator and a school board member from Shelby
County, Tenn., home to Memphis.

Memphis has seen massive change,
including the merging of the city into Shelby County schools and
the subsequent breaking away of six small towns in the county to
form their own districts. In the middle of this, the
Tennessee-run Achievement School District or ASD, took over a
bunch of Memphis’ lowest-performing schools and converted them
into charter schools. The ASD provoked a district-run competitor,
an Innovation Zone of autonomous schools overseen by Shelby
County.

All three panelists speaking at
the EWA “Deep Dive” were connected with the Innovation
Zone.

Bradley Leon, chief of
strategies and innovation in Shelby County schools, quickly
disavowed the term “portfolio,” saying it sounded as “antiseptic
and corporate as it comes.”

“All we’re trying to do is bring
the power back to our schools.” Leon said.

School Board Chairman Kevin
Woods said innovation schools cost more and “very few decisions
have no negatives,” but said the schools have been able to
harness private support and have outperformed academically those
in the ASD.

“We look forward to
collaborating with (ASD), but we look forward to beating them as
well,” Woods said.

Antonio Burt, a principal of
Ford Road Elementary School in Memphis, said autonomy involves
challenges, including learning on the fly how to handle budgets,
and stretching and, if that fails, replacing teachers who are
used to the old way of doing things.

“It’s helped a lot of people get
out of the spirit of entitlement,” Burt said.